dmiles

Thanks Ninja, for the quick and informative reply, much appreciated. I'm confident that the conclusions you have drawn are accurate. The upside that I see is the "margin settlement" which I did not know about. However, not being able to short, especially as I am just starting out and trying to find my own system which works for me, is just not something that I see as wise or even practical. Thanks again, I will definitely update this topic as I proceed with this. As of right now, for me it boils down to taking a disbursement and paying the tax (since I would not be subject to the additional 10%) or going the route of CMEG with a smaller account.

Hello, I'm new to this, and still learning. I noticed with IB you can rollover a traditional IRA into an IRA with them. From what I have been able to gather from all the legal speak, as far as trading goes, it is treated like a cash account, so I assume that it would have to settle overnight, just like a regular cash account? My own situation is such that I actually have 3 separate retirement accounts, and the one I would like to at least partially rollover to IB is one that I just throw as much as I can into when I file my taxes every year. It would be great to rollover say $30K from this account into an IB IRA account, and use that to avoid opening a CMEG account. I know that margin is technically a loan, so I suspect that I won't be able to do this. I know I could always take a disbursement and use that to open my account, but I'd rather avoid the taxes while I'm still working, even though I'm old enough to avoid the extra 10% penalty. I realize that I could call IB and likely get an immediate answer, but I just thought I'd take a shot here first. I'm in no hurry, I still have several months to go in the simulator. I also believe that there is a high likelihood that there are others here with this same question. Any and all thoughts or advise would be much appreciated.